Production

Shared Ownership

Shared Ownership, otherwise known as Fractional Ownership is where a group of people get together and purchase a property to share. It's a fairly new thing in Australia, and is tightly regulated by ASIC. At the core, it's a fairly simple thing - each owner owns a certain share, so they get to use it a certain amount of time each year. The issue brought to us in this project was how to fairly distribute the usage of the property.

Owners Interface

To build an interface to allow owners to;

request their prefered use periods,

automatically allocate use periods and

allow owners to manage their usage weeks.

The Pain

As you can imagine, a lot of the owners wish to use the property at the same time - peak holiday periods such as school holidays etc. How do we fairly distribute this?

The Priority Matrix system is a complex process that is used to determine this, and varies with each project. In this instance, the Priorty Matrix says;

6 owners, each get 8 weeks per year (the remaining time is used for maintenance)

Each owner chooses 4 2-week periods when they would like to stay.

Each owner is given a "priority". The owner with the top priority gets allocated their first choice, the owner with the next priorty gets allocated their first choice if available, if not their next choice. The process continues to the 8th owner. Then the priority is reversed and the 8th owner gets their next choice etc.

The allocation is processed in 2 rounds, and each year the order of priorty is changed.

Any weeks not allocated by the choices made are then randomly allocated to the owners.

Owners then get to use their allocated times, swap those times with other owners, or allocate those periods to a rental pool that earns an income.

The Solution

Toledoh implemented a web based solution using Nuts'n'Bolts with the following functionality;

User log-in and profile management: Allowing owners to be able to log in and maintain their contact details, passwords etc.

Date based ballot windows for collection of requests: During specific time periods, and ballot is held allowing owners to make their usage requests. This is form based, with email alerts going out to owners to remind them to make their requests during the fixed time window.

Prioty Matrix based algorythm for allocation of usage weeks. Based on the Priority Matrix, we built a processes of working through each owners request in their alloted order of priorty. Usage was allocated and at the end of the process, the owners are notified of their usage weeks. All of the process is logged to allow for future reviews, and the priority matrix is managed via the admin for the site.

Owners access the calendar via the "dashboard" and can see their dates etc. Owners then have the ability to;

Trade usage between owners: Where owners can request specific weeks, or offer up unwanted weeks to others.